Will China get old before it gets rich?

On the surface, population control is a Chinese success story. But as Zhao Baige, the country’s leading expert on the issue admits, the challenge now is very different...

On the surface, population control is a Chinese success story. But as Zhao Baige, the country’s leading expert on the issue admits, the challenge now is very different...

The notorious ‘single child’ policy, enforced by stringent family planning regulations (now somewhat less draconian), has had the intended effect. The government reckons that since it was introduced, China has prevented over 400 million births. There is now an average birth rate of 1.8 children per couple, compared to six when it was introduced.

But while that has been brought under control, it has left other demographic problems in its wake. One is the gender imbalance - a ratio of 106.3 males for every 100 females. More serious still is the growing weight of the elderly in the population pyramid. This is an issue more usually associated with the global North - but it sees China facing the distressing possibility of being the first country ever to get old before it gets rich. Already more than one Chinese person in ten is over 60. By 2040 it could be as high as one in four - by which point the working age population could be just half the overall total, working to support equal numbers of elderly people and children.

Meanwhile, the sheer weight of numbers is still putting huge pressure on the environment, says Zhao Baige, vice-minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, and one of the country’s leading experts on population issues. “The basic fact is we have over 1.3 billion people in China, which accounts for 22% of the world’s population, while we have only 7% of the world’s arable land.”

Migration into cities is an inevitable consequence, but this in itself puts growing strain on China’s ecosystem, she says. So rather than merely controlling numbers and growth rate, the challenge now is to shift policy so that it tackles wider issues. Three singled out by Zhao include improving the literacy rate, eliminating gender discrimination, and addressing the issue of an ageing population. And that means moving from stick to carrot in terms of making change happen.

“We are introducing a system in the countryside to encourage people to obey the family policy plan, granting economic rewards rather than punishing people who break the rules,” she said. It combines free contraception services for rural women, with more sensitive local economic assistance, such as micro loans for communities in the remote countryside, which can help them stay on their land and make a living from it.

But she admits there are plenty of difficulties ahead. “For example, how should we promote proper contraception without offending women’s rights? That will be a great challenge to our work,” says Zhao, whose background is as a specialist in reproductive health. And, she adds, China’s complex bureaucracy can make the transition from policy to implementation fraught with problems.

Zhao, who also has a doctorate from Cambridge, said China was keen to learn from the West. “By learning from the experience of Western countries during their industrialisation, we may suffer a lot less and not have to start from the very beginning. Just as we’ve seen in many Western countries, the rise in social standards and education should help reduce the fertility rate.”

“Ultimately,” says Zhao, “the solution to China’s environmental problem is closely linked to its population situation. We realise that China’s population and environmental concerns are the world’s concerns, and we are willing to take the responsibility and share our experience of solving the problems with the rest of the world.”

Interview with Zhao Baige by Clifford Coonan in Beijing. Additional material by Roger East.

2 November 2006

Zhao Baige